


100 Days of Dragon Age

by osunism



Series: Betwixt & Between [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Multi, One Word Prompt Meme, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 21:13:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3665247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osunism/pseuds/osunism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>100 Word Prompts featuring snapshots in the lives of the Inquisition's members and inner circle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is just for fun. Ten chapters, ten prompts per chapter. :D

**1\. Beginning**

    The first time Hadiza laughs Cullen feels like dawn is breaking after a long darkness. Against the backdrop of the world’s imminent doom, she manages to find humor in the smallest things. Her laughter is sunlight, and he feels the first bits of spring take root in the cold winter of his soul, rousing a part of himself he thought long buried.

**2\. Love**

    She rests her forehead against his and they breathe one another in. He wants to tell her how perfect she is, but the words mix up in his mind. It is a microcosm of the universe itself, words and phrases melding and expanding, reshaping to form something suitable to present to the woman before him. “I love you,” he says instead.

**3\. Hate**

    Corypheus is a creature unlike any other, and when he holds her up by one arm, lifting her clear from the hard-packed earth, he sneers at her with absolute disdain. At first, he says nothing, but then she lifts her head, star-thieved eyes flashing in abject defiance. Only then does he feel the need to quell whatever fire burns beneath her skin. He begins to remove the Anchor.

**4\. Dark**

    When all else is stripped away, he is left only with himself in the darkness. The cell reeks of old piss and an ill-tended chamber pot, and the guard ignores him entirely. He finds it suitable to his mood. When the prison door opens, the sunlight looks different, as if it might burn him if he reaches for it. He shrink further into the darkness of his cell.

**5\. Light**

    She revels in her magic; he’s always known this. He fears it and yet with her she has brought him nothing save peace. Her skin is bathed in the shimmering aura of her healing magic, and as he kisses her it washes over him like softened water, warm and languorous. Their fingers interlace, grips tightening as he surges forward. He’s never felt magic like this.

**6\. Memory**

    The first time she boards the Siren’s Call she’s immediately assigned to latrine duty. It’s not a punishment, they tell her; everyone’s gotta start somewhere. She does her duty, grumbling only when no one with any particular rank is within earshot. The Captain is a lovely Rivaini woman who is as quick to smile as she is to bark out orders. She is the first woman Aja has ever truly aspired to be like.

**7\. Innocence**

    The healing ward is the most traumatizing place in the Circle. She thinks the apprenticeship will consist of healing injuries wrought from carelessness and mishaps. The first time she sees one of the Templars’ victims, she does not speak to anyone for two weeks. Her soul is bent with the weight of what she’s seen, and her eyes are wide open.

**8\. Crossroads**

    They’ve been in the village for a scant few days and people are already clamoring for her to aid them. Cassandra frowns at the brazen nature of the requests, some of them sounding beneath the will of the Inquisition, but Hadiza takes to the tasks without excuse. They ride the length and breadth of the Hinterlands, accomplishing these seemingly innocuous tasks. From there, the Inquisition’s reputation grows.

**9\. Happiness**

    He catches her swaying to a rhythm only she can hear. Occasionally she will drum on her thigh, half-sing a few words to herself in a tongue he cannot understand, spin, stomp, all with a pitchfork in her hand. Blackwall grins as Aja meets his eyes, her smile genuine, lent a roguish charm on account of the gold tooth. He tells her not to stop on his account. She gives a seemingly courtly bow, and continues.

**10\. Rejection**

    He regrets telling her he does not dance because watching her in the arms of another man who moves her across the floor effortlessly is maddening. He regrets telling her he does not dance because he wants to be the one whose fingertips dance along the silver-dusted skin of her exposed back. He wants to be the one who whirls her about in an elegant and continuous waltz, but he can not even tap an agitated boot to the damnable rhythm.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another ten prompts ayyyyy!

**11\. Sorrow**

    When she steps out of the Fade rift, she’s nothing short of shell shocked. She hears words, but they are muffled and incoherent. Someone is shouting at her and she registers a lesser demon harassing the remaining Grey Wardens. In her momentary anger, she lifts her marked hand and sucks the demon back into the rift and shuts it. Cheers go up but she simply stands there wondering how she will tell Varric what she has done.

**12\. Scar**

    Line handling is thirsty work, and those who are not strong enough or aware enough find themselves with rope burn, severed limbs, or dead. No one tells her about the difference between marlin line and mooring lines, nor what marlin line is used for. She is expected to know this. No one tells her what happens when the line snaps, and she hears their angry and alarmed bellows too late. A line of fire streaks across her face to accompany the impact of the snapped line. Red stains her vision and she lays twitching on the ground, alive, but marked forever.

**13\. Pain**

    The Breach pulses, as if it is a living, sentient thing, and her mark answers. She feels it spreading like poison in her blood and drops to her knees, the wind stolen from her heaving lungs as she holds her cursed hand up, trembling, peering into a piece of the Fade as it seeks to overtake her. Cassandra hauls her to her feet, but there is no sympathy in her eyes, only a profound sense of duty and accusation.

**14\. Family**

    When Bann Trevelyan makes the pilgrimage to Skyhold, Hadiza is livid when he arrives. Seeing his watery eyes, and trembling form, however, softens her heart. In his old age, he has been stripped of pride and arrogance, leaving only the humble core of a man who knows the depth of true loss. Wordlessly, she embraces her father. Fifteen years of resentment are washed away with her own tears and his in the privacy of Josephine’s office. He whispers how proud he is of her, and she forgets that he once hated mages.

**15\. Clouds**

    The hole in his roof will never be fixed, she admits. However, when she wakes and catches him standing in a shaft of sunlight filtering through the leaves, his eyes shut in bliss, and a deep breath expanding in his chest, she doesn’t broach the subject again.

**16\. Water**

    The Fallow Mire is a pile of shit to her. She hates the smell of rot that permeates the air to the point where she feels as if she is breathing in the remains of the dead. She doesn’t see the undead shadows moving in the heavy, still mist. But when Sera idly kicks a rock into the nearby standing water, something stirs that chills the blood.

**17\. Earth**

    “I’m convinced you’re not human.” He tells her one night. She is careful in arranging her dreadlocks as she adjusts in his embrace. She awards him a slight smile, and shrugs a shoulder. He’s convinced because this lovely woman with skin the color of tilled soil, fertile and rich, and eyes like starlight, is looking at him to keep herself grounded.

**18\. Fire**

    He doesn’t have time to hide his alarm when he walks in on her hurling a full fireball into the fireplace for the first time. He freezes, and dread consumes him momentarily. Her back is to him, and she seems agitated, pacing about only in her smalls. She turns just as he vanishes down the stairwell to return to the main hall.

**19\. Air**

    He likes high open places. After being cloistered in the Circle for so long, and then trapped in the stone hell of Kirkwall for ten years, he takes every opportunity he can to climb to the battlements and breathe the crisp mountain air. The wind from the peaks passes through him like a breath from heaven, and he smiles, feeling his past scatter in its wake like leaves in autumn.

**20\. Alone**

    He is at once part of the Inquisition and beyond it, and he watches them dance around the campfire with an unreadable expression. Hadiza and her sister, Aja, are engaged in a spirited Rivaini rowing song, displaying their improvisational skills by utilizing their meal cups for percussion, trading the call and response lyrics in an intricate rhythm. In this, he finds their filial closeness alienating. Iron Bull joins in once he has listened to the round twice and learned the words. When Hadiza glances his way, her gaze inviting and questioning, he awards her a thin and indulgent smile.

 


End file.
